The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry has canceled plans to honor Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal at its annual awards lunch next week.

Huppenthal has been mired in controversy since Wednesday when he acknowledged to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com that he wrote fiery, anonymous blog posts on political websites Blog for Arizona and Seeing Red AZ in which he called people who receive public assistance "lazy pigs" and compared the work of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to the actions of the Nazis.

"We are canceling the award as a direct result of what The Arizona Republic has reported," said Glenn Hamer, the chamber's president and chief executive officer.

Huppenthal on Friday could not be reached for comment.

The lunch, scheduled for next Friday, is an annual event to honor community leaders. Hamer said the chamber created a special award to recognize Huppenthal's support of the Arizona College and Career Ready Standards.

Huppenthal spent many weeks in the past year traveling across the state to promote and explain the new standards, which are based on the Common Core State Standards Initiative. He aimed to help parents and educators understand Common Core, but the meetings were sometimes contentious, with protests from conservatives who dislike the new standards.

Hamer said the offensive blog posts contrast sharply with the deep, thoughtful conversations he has had with Huppenthal about the importance of making sure all students have enough education for college or a job after high school.

He said at first he had trouble believing Huppenthal wrote the posts.

"I am shocked. I am shocked and saddened," Hamer said. "The comments that were posted should not be posted under any circumstances. I am in extreme pain over this conversation."

Hamer said his board will soon decide whether to ask Huppenthal to step down or drop out of the November 2014 election, although the group has no power to make him do so. Huppenthal has served as Arizona's top education leader since 2011.

"Public officials need to be held to a high standard," he said.

He told The Republic on Wednesday that he often stays up late and "engages in debate" using the pseudonyms Falcon9 and Thucydide. He issued a statement: "I sincerely regret if my comments have offended anyone."

The blog comments included:

• "It was Darwin, not Hitler, who named the Germans the master race," Thucydides posted in September 2013 on the blog Seeing Red AZ. "It was Darwin who expressed approval of eliminating both Jews and Africans. Hitler worked to eliminate the Jews. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood was given the job of eliminating African-Americans. Hitler fed 6 million Jews into the ovens. Sanger has fed 16 million African-Americans into the abortion mills."